Lambeth's 2026/27 calendar moves Friday rounds to Saturdays at Christmas and nothing else, not even on bank holidays. Rubbish is fortnightly, garden waste £99.
Two things about Lambeth’s collections are not on the page that tells you your bin day. The first is that rubbish from a Clapham house with a black wheelie bin is emptied every two weeks, not weekly. The second is that at Christmas the council moves almost nothing.
Lambeth publishes ten collection calendars for 2026/27, one for each day of a fortnightly cycle. Read all ten and the rule is plain. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday rounds do not move at all, for any bank holiday or for Christmas and New Year. Only Friday rounds shift, and they shift to the Saturday.
This page pulls the whole cluster together: which container takes what, what the paid services cost this year, when nothing moves and when something does, and the two tips a Clapham address can use. Everything below was read from Lambeth’s own pages and PDFs on 30 August 2026.
Which container takes what
Lambeth splits households three ways, and the split decides your service before your street does. The council’s check your bin collection day page sets it out:
- Kerbside homes with room to store bins. Rubbish fortnightly in a black wheelie bin. Recycling weekly in a green bin. Food waste weekly. Small electricals and batteries weekly.
- Kerbside homes with no storage space, and flats above shops. Everything weekly, but in sacks rather than bins. No food waste collection from flats above shops.
- Estates and larger communal blocks. Bulk bins for rubbish and recycling, weekly or more often. Food waste from communal bins on some estates only, with the rollout to all estates due by May 2026.
Recycling all goes in together. Lambeth’s recycling page takes paper, card, plastic bottles and tubs, glass bottles and jars, cans, cartons and clean foil in the same bin. Lids stay on plastic bottles and come off glass jars. Items go in loose, not bagged, so the crew can see what is in there.
The list of things Lambeth will not recycle is longer than most:
- black bin bags, plastic film and cling film
- polystyrene and foil-lined packets such as crisp packets
- shredded paper
- broken glass, window glass, pyrex and light bulbs
- aerosols, textiles, nappies and food-soiled boxes
Cardboard that will not fit is still collected if it is flattened and has no polystyrene in it. Wet cardboard is not recycled, so it goes inside the sack rather than beside it.
Get it wrong and the bin does not get emptied. A contaminated wheelie bin gets a sticker on the lid and the resident has to pull the wrong items out. A contaminated bulk bin or clear sack is collected as rubbish instead, with no chance to fix it. Lambeth writes to residents if a bin is contaminated more than once in an eight-week period.
Why rubbish is fortnightly
Lambeth moved street-level households from weekly to fortnightly black bin collections in 2024. Two routes in Tulse Hill and West Dulwich, covering 2,350 homes, changed on 6 February 2024, and the rest of the borough followed from 15 April. The council reported that the pilot streets reached a 59% recycling rate against a borough average of 43% (Lambeth).
Recycling, food waste, garden waste and the small electricals collection all stayed weekly. Households on sacks and households on communal bulk bins were not affected, so a Clapham flat above a shop is still on a weekly rubbish collection while the house next door is on a fortnightly one.
Bank holidays and Christmas
This is the part Lambeth buries in ten PDFs. Each kerbside calendar carries a legend at the foot with two marks: a black asterisk meaning “your collection days won’t change for bank holidays”, and a red star for the Christmas and New Year arrangement.
Reading all ten for 2026/27 gives this:
| Your round | Bank holidays | Christmas and New Year |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | No change | No change. Collected on the substitute holiday, Monday 28 December |
| Tuesday | No change | No change |
| Wednesday | No change | No change |
| Thursday | No change | No change. Collected on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve |
| Friday | No change | Moves to Saturday. 25 December becomes Saturday 26 December, 1 January becomes Saturday 2 January |
So a Clapham household on a Thursday round has a collection on Christmas Eve and again on New Year’s Eve, and a household on a Monday round gets one on the bank holiday Monday after Christmas. Only Friday rounds lose their normal day.
One warning about the calendars themselves. Lambeth asks you to work out whether your next rubbish collection falls in Week A or Week B using a table of week-beginning dates, and that table stops at the week beginning 27 July 2026. As of today it cannot be used to pick the right PDF. Use the council’s collection day checker first, note the date of your next rubbish collection, then match it against the dates printed in the calendars.
Bins go out by 6am on your collection day and not before 8pm the night before. They come back in by 8am the following morning at the latest.
Timed collections in Clapham
Clapham is one of five Lambeth town centres where waste can only go out inside a fixed window. The others are Brixton, Streatham, Waterloo and West Norwood. In the Clapham timed collection area the windows are:
- Rubbish, Monday to Saturday: 5am to 8am, or 5.30pm to 6.30pm. Sunday: 5am to 8am only.
- Recycling, Monday to Saturday: 5am to 8am, or 5.30pm to 6.30pm. No Sunday collection.
Inside the timed area you cannot leave a bin on public land, and if your waste is collected from the street you must use sacks. Where there is no front garden, the sacks go next to street furniture such as a lamp post or a litter bin. The rules apply to businesses as well as homes, including businesses whose waste is collected by a private firm. There is no online lookup for the boundary: Lambeth says to check the map on the town centre page or look for the signs on your street.
Garden waste: £99 a year
Lambeth’s garden waste service is a paid subscription and the price is per bag, not per bin. The council’s costs page sets 2026 prices at:
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Weekly collection of 2 reusable bags, 12 months | £99 |
| Each reusable bag, if you do not have one | £11 |
| Each extra bag collected, per year | £37 |
| Roll of 10 compostable bags for occasional larger loads | £37 |
| Administration fee if you pay by cheque | £15 |
The bags take grass, leaves, weeds, hedge trimmings, fallen fruit and branches up to 10cm across. They do not take soil, rubble, flower pots, bonfire ash or pet waste from cats and dogs. Each bag has to be light enough for one person to lift.
Bulky waste: £36, or free through Emmaus
There are two routes and most people only find the paid one.
The chargeable collection is for items that cannot be reused: £36 for up to three items, £70 for up to six, £116 for up to ten. Ten items is the maximum on one order. You have ten minutes to pay once you finish booking, and once paid it is not refundable. Anything not listed and paid for on the booking will not be taken. Collections run until 6pm.
The free route is a partnership with the charity Emmaus, and it is open to every Lambeth resident including those on estates. Emmaus will take furniture in genuinely resaleable condition: dining sets, wardrobes, bed frames, chests of drawers, bedside cabinets, office furniture and chairs, none of them upholstered. It will not take electricals, upholstered furniture or anything marked, stained, rusted or missing parts. Collections run on Tuesday and Wednesday between 1.30pm and 4.30pm, and Saturday between 9.30am and 12.30pm, bookable up to six weeks ahead (Lambeth). If you live above the fourth floor and the lift is out, the item has to be brought to the ground floor. Emmaus crews will not dismantle furniture.
Replacement bins are also chargeable. A 140-litre rubbish bin is £73, a 240-litre £82 and a 360-litre £108. Green recycling bins, recycling sacks, kitchen caddies and outdoor food bins are all free (Lambeth).
Missed collection: two working days, and not straight away
Lambeth asks you to wait before reporting. Evening crews often go back for a round that was blocked earlier in the day, so a missed bin should only be reported if it is still there the next morning. After that you have two working days. Report it later than that and it waits for your next normal collection day (Lambeth).
The council will not come back at all if the miss was not its fault, which it defines as a bin that was not at the front of the property, held the wrong waste, or was too full for the lid to close.
The two tips
A Clapham address can use both, and they do different jobs.
Vale Street, West Norwood, SE27 9PA is Lambeth’s own site and takes reuse and recycling only. You cannot dispose of rubbish there, and vans and commercial vehicles are turned away. Booking is required for any visit by vehicle, and you must bring photo ID plus proof of a Lambeth address every single time. Opening hours are Monday, Thursday and Friday 7.30am to 4.30pm, Saturday and Sunday 8am to 5pm, closed Tuesday and Wednesday, and closed every day between midday and 1pm. It shuts on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Cooking oil and engine oil are not being accepted at present (Lambeth).
Smugglers Way, Wandsworth, SW18 1JS is the one to use for actual rubbish, and it is the only one of the two that takes upholstered furniture. It is run by the Western Riverside Waste Authority rather than Lambeth. Lambeth residents must book a slot to arrive by car, but not to arrive on foot or by bike, and the same photo ID and proof of address rules apply (Lambeth). Opening times are not published on a plain page: the Western Riverside Waste Authority site puts them behind its booking form, which takes bookings up to seven days ahead.
Batteries, and the one Clapham drop-off
Lambeth collects small electricals and batteries weekly from the kerb, but only from properties that have a wheelie bin. Flats and estates on communal bins are not covered and have to use one of the tips or a shop collection point.
E-scooter and e-bike batteries are refused everywhere, including both tips, because of the fire risk. Lambeth names two places to take them instead. The Clapham one is Evans Cycles, Unit 2, 65 Clapham High Street, SW4 7TG, and the council warns that space there is limited. The other is Decathlon at Surrey Quays (Lambeth).
More Clapham local information
- Clapham roadworks and travel, including what is closed now
- Clapham council tax bands for 2026/27
- Parking in Clapham: permits, tariffs and the free bays
- Clapham planning news
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